Opinion: A Ukrainian visitor shows us what's at stake in the Hollywood strikes

A photo taken from behind the Hollywood sign at night, with the lights of the city of Los Angeles below.

By Linda Deutsch

Aug. 25, 2023 3:05 AM PT

This is a story about serendipity — of an unexpected encounter that reminded me again of the power Hollywood has in the world.

I went outside one recent Friday afternoon to collect a package that had been delivered to my Hollywood Hills home. A lovely young woman was coming up the street. She approached me hesitantly.

“Can I ask you something?” she said. “If I keep walking up this hill, will I get to the Hollywood sign?”

She was dressed in a lacy white duster over slacks and T-shirt and her shoes were not meant for hiking. I told her she was taking the wrong route and asked if she had a car. She did not.

She spoke with an accent unfamiliar to me and I asked where she was from. Ukraine. She explained that her name was Maria and she was in Los Angeles for one day to pick up some immigration documents and would then be flying back to Spokane, Wash., where she was staying with a friend. With the hours she had left, she had taken a taxi to Hollywood, hoping to find the famous sign and see some of the glamour she knew from movies.

I thought she looked like a lost princess and I knew what I had to do. I told her to wait and fetched my car keys. Within minutes we were off on a mini tour of Hollywood. First stop was the sign. I turned the corner from Franklin heading up Beachwood Drive and it loomed before us. She gasped, “There it is!” Then she said something I will always remember. “People here may think these are just letters on a hill. But to us, this is our dream.”

We stopped so she could take pictures. It was dinner time so we went into the Beachwood Cafe, where she could barely eat anything because she was so excited. I told her it was said that Harry Styles once dined there, which added to her joy.

She then poured out the story of her life, which might make a pretty good movie itself. Maria was born into a very large family in a village on the border of Ukraine and Russia. When her mother fell ill, Maria and some of her many siblings were sent to an orphanage where she was educated and cared for.

“It’s not sad,” she said. “They were very good to me.”

At 17, she left the orphanage and went to school at a Ukrainian university. She wanted to be a doctor and by the time the war began last year she had finished almost all of medical school. But bombs were falling; she knew she had to leave. A friend in Spokane invited her to stay with them.

That was about six months ago. She has learned that in order to finish her studies and get a medical degree in the United States she needs to perfect her English. She began taking classes while working to support herself.

I told her about my career at the Associated Press and the famous stories I had covered. Her eyes grew wide when I talked about my contact with Michael Jackson and other stars. But she was most impressed that I really live in Hollywood, a place that seemed fictional to her from afar.

Then it was time to head out. She would need to get an Uber to the airport soon. But before she left, I decided to give her one more Hollywood experience. We drove along Hollywood Boulevard, past the Pantages Theatre, souvenir shops and tourist haunts.

“This is like a movie,” she said. Soon, we were at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. I parked at the curb and told her to go look at the famous handprints and footprints in the cement. After running for a quick look before I would have to move the car, she came back and exclaimed, “I just saw Donald Duck! That is my childhood.” I told her to go further in and see more. By the time she returned, she had seen the prints of Marilyn Monroe and many others.

I drove her across the street to the Hollywood Roosevelt hotel and advised her to look around the historic site of the first Academy Awards. She leaned toward me and said she wanted to tell me something in confidence.

“When I decided to come to Hollywood today, I prayed for a miracle, that I would see somebody famous. And I met you.”

She emailed me when she got to the airport and again when she arrived in Spokane. She thanked me and said she would come back to see me one day. I told her our encounter was an example of an English word she didn’t know yet: serendipity. Each of us found something we had not been seeking.

Hollywood still casts its spell far and wide. Studio heads take note: Its future is in your hands along with the precious dreams of millions.

Linda Deutsch was a longtime special correspondent for the Associated Press. She has been a resident of Hollywood for more than 50 years.